By Virginia You
Staff Writer

Life, love and … economics? It's true if you're taking Agricultural Economics 217, where the text is a novel titled "Life, Love and Economics."

The text - written by Dee E. Cuttell, a professor of technology, Gavin Sinclair, also a professor of technology and Robert W. Taylor, a professor of agricultural economics - was started because of the lack of interest students had in reading ordinary textbooks.

"Students read 15 percent of what I asked them to read and that was disappointing," said Taylor. "As a teacher, I can only influence the people in my class if they read the textbook, and they weren't reading it."

Another reason for the birth of the novel-formatted text was that the traditional text did not seem to fully prepare students.

"I went through the traditional book and almost felt guilty because I didn't prepare them for their future," said Sinclair. "Since this is a course mainly for non-business people, I realized that this is a one shot chance to give them the economic values that they need for their lives."

As a result, Sinclair proposed the idea of a novel format for a text to Taylor, who agreed to try it out. So, over this past summer, the three professors worked on constructing the nearly 200 page textbook, which excludes pages of homework.

The text follows the lives of Samantha Fletcher, a graduate of "West Lafayette University," and Jason Cooley, a graduate of "Bloomington University," with economic topics incorporated into each chapter. To include these topics, Cuttell, Sinclair and Taylor discussed real-life topics such as first dates, buying a car and unemployment, giving them an economic twist.

This semester, Sinclair and Taylor put the textbook to use in their AGEC 217 classes, which resulted in several responses from students.

"I learned a lot while being entertained at the same time," said Angela Steinmetz, a sophomore in the School of Liberal Arts. "The information learned was useful in everyday life."

While there were students who enjoyed the new spin on a text, others had slight objections.

"It doesn't relate with what we talk about in class," said Mike Klus, a sophomore in the School of Consumer and Family sciences. "But the format is interesting and it makes (the material) easier to understand."

Taylor admits that the order in the book and the order in which he lectures are different, but he assigns the reading to be done before the semester is over, so that the students can go back and review what is being taught in class.

Even with these difficulties, there are still those students who have enjoyed the textbook, reading it as a novel.

"Two weeks before the students were supposed to read (that chapter), a student came up to me, mad that I had killed Uncle Mitchell (a fictional character in the text)," said Taylor. "This has never happened to me before."